Video Game Film Adaptations Even Worse Than Borderlands

The release of Borderlands to less-than-stellar reviews — it currently sits at 9% on Rotten Tomatoes — is a good reminder to filmgoers that Hollywood has yet to figure out how to make good video game movies on a consistent basis. It doesn’t matter how good 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie is, it can never erase the cinematic stench of 1993’s Super Mario Bros., the granddaddy of all bad video game movie adaptations. As infamous as that film is, however, there are video game movies that are actually much worse.

While Cate Blanchett and Jack Black hope you forget they ever appeared in Borderlands, it’s important to note just how bad the video game film genre can get. Following are ten of the worst movie adaptations of video games, listed alphabetically, which managed to take a popular video game and completely forget what made them great. Keep this list handy, should you ever be tempted to give these films a watch, or begin to wonder if the criticism they receive is unwarranted. When we say these are the worst of the worst, we do not say that lightly.

Be warned: the list is heavy with the works of Uwe Boll, the unabashed king of low-budget video game movie adaptations. We did not intend to include so many of his works, but as anyone who has had to sit through one of his movies will attest, his films have rightfully earned their inclusion on this list.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

Alone in the Dark is basically a ripoff of the 1997 film The Relic, which is a movie quite unworthy of being ripped off in the first place. It also rips off Alien, as well as bits of assorted zombie movies. Unfortunately, it does none of them well, which is why it stands at 1% on Rotten Tomatoes. We didn’t leave a number off, it really is just worthy of one percent. You can see the regret in star Christian Slater’s face in every shot, and if you haven’t guessed, this is a Uwe Boll film.

The movie starts with an opening crawl longer than any Star Wars film, and it still fails to explain what’s going on in this dismal adaptation. That’s why Keith Phipps of The AV Club warns in his review to “beware the film that confuses before it even begins.” Brian Gallagher said in his review for MovieWeb: “The dialogue is atrocious, the characters are about as hollow as they come, the plot is incredibly muddled…” Fans of the original 1992 game will likely wonder how a classic survival game about a haunted mansion became this mess.

Alone in the Dark
is currently streaming on Freevee, Plex, Tubi, and the Roku Channel.

BloodRayne (2006)

The 2002 game BloodRayne is an excellent vampire action adventure set during World War II. The 2006 film BloodRayne changes the setting to Europe in the 1800s and features Kristanna Loken as a vampire hybrid out to kill full-blooded vampires. However, the sets look like they were built in someone’s garage and director Uwe Boll is unable to craft a coherent story. The film earned six Razzie nominations in 2006, including Worst Picture and Worst Director.

BloodRayne’s cast alone should have made the film watchable by mere default. Ben Kingsley, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Billy Zane, and Meat Loaf all appear, and yet, Boll manages to make the film a near-unwatchable mess. Loken is a serviceable lead actress, but the film is a poor follow-up to her breakthrough role as the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The film’s dialogue is stilted, the plot is cliche-ridden, and the whole affair is an insult to the talent on the screen.

BloodRayne
is currently streaming on Fawesome, Plex, and the Roku Channel.

Doom (2005)

Doom is one of the most iconic video games of all time, and is largely considered the “father” of all first-person shooter games. It deserved better than a predictable actioner with questionable creature effects. It swipes ideas from several films, mostly Aliens, with “space marines” investigating a lab overrun by deadly creatures. Even the rifles they use look similar, but it lacks the energy and urgency of the James Cameron classic. This is one of several flops for Dwayne Johnson from early in his career, but The Rock managed to turn it around eventually.

The film gets one thing right: a battle sequence filmed in the first-person point-of-view format, like the game. It’s the lone highlight. That aside, the film as a whole scores a dismal 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, and any hopes of a movie franchise died with the negative fan reception. Nearly two decades later, Johnson still has not learned his lesson, as he made another terrible video game movie adaptation: the live-action flop Rampage, which also failed to grasp the source material.

Doom
is currently streaming on Peacock.

Double Dragon (1994)

Double Dragon commits a cardinal sin for movies — it’s a dumb film that thinks it’s clever. It’s filled with bad jokes, lapses in logic, and a sad attempt at cultural satire. It’s very loosely based on the hit fighting game from the late 1980s. The film’s third-rate action is buried under a cheesy plot involving magic necklaces, apocalyptic street gangs, and technobabble delivered with absolutely terrible visual effects.

The cast is a mixed bag, with Scott Wolf as one of the Dragons and Alyssa Milano as the leader of a street gang (Seriously!). On the plus side, there’s Mark Dascascos (John Wick Ch. 3), Jeff Imada (Big Trouble in Little China), Al Leong (Die Hard), and Julia Nickson (Rambo: First Blood Part II) to give the film some action bona-fides. Unfortunately, these respected martial arts actors spend most of the film being beaten by Scott Wolf. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so frustrating and dumb. The film has a 12% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the audience score isn’t much better, at 26%.

Double Dragon
is currently streaming on Prime Video, Pluto, Tubi, Peacock, Plex, and The Roku Channel.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

1995’s Mortal Kombat is one of the better video game movie adaptations ever made. It’s cheesy for sure, but it’s faithful to the characters and lots of fun. The 1997 sequel, however, is a disappointing cash grab with some of the worst special effects of the 1990s. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation managed to bring back Robin Shou (Liu Kang) and Talisa Soto (Kitana), but it’s never a good sign when even Christopher Lambert wants no part in your movie.

The quality of the film takes a huge step back from the original. Practical effects and makeup are bad, the special effects are terrible, the editing is incoherent, and the story feels like it is being made up as the movie goes along. The film could only manage a dismal 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, forcing the franchise off the big screen until Warner Bros. rebooted it with a decent R-rated adaptation in 2021 that was faithful to the game’s brutality.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
is not currently available to stream.

Postal (2007)

The very first scene of Uwe Boll’s Postal features the 9/11 hijackers accidentally flying a plane into the World Trade Center, all played for laughs. This is what passes for comedy in this truly awful film devoid of any real humor or humanity. Postal is an adaptation of the 1997 PC game of the same name and manages to carry over only the title and the slimmest idea of a premise, involving a “rage virus” that sends people on a killing spree. Here, it’s merely an excuse for Boll to include tasteless violence, including mass shootings and images of dead children.

Boll tries to justify all of this with an attempt at Robocop-like satire, but his filmmaking skills are too inept to pull it off. In her review of the film, MaryAnn Johanson of Flick Filosopher said “Boll mistakes shock for satire and crudity for cleverness in this desperately unfunny, hopelessly clueless catalogue of the ills of America… that ends up rejoicing in what it believes it is sending up.” The film earned Boll a Razzie Award for Worst Director, and an additional “Worst Career Achievement” award.

Postal
is currently streaming on Plex and Tubi.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The Resident Evil films aren’t exactly classics, but they are an entertaining watch, thanks in large part to Milla Jovovich’s iconic portrayal of Alice. However, the second film in the series, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, managed to get so many things wrong that it angered most fans of the classic zombie game. As a film, it isn’t nearly as bad as the other movies on this list, but it is the weakest of the Jovovich films. The film turns the main villain, Nemesis, into a lumbering, disappointing adversary, and fails to grasp the potential of the character in the game, which has a legendary reputation among fans.

The directorial debut of Alexander Witt, the film is a herky-jerky mess. The camera work is amateurish, the editing is frenetic and difficult to follow, and the characters are all silly caricatures. That includes the first appearance of fan-favorite character Jill Valentine, played by Sienna Guillory, who looks the part, but is undermined by a ridiculous script. Thankfully, the latter films in the series improved some after this misfire.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
is currently streaming on-demand from Sy-Fy.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Not even the appeal of 3D could make Silent Hill: Revelation a success. The M.J. Bassett-directed sequel flopped at the U.S. box office, despite a strong cast that included Sean Bean, Carrie-Anne Moss, Malcolm McDowell, and Kit Harrington, who starred in the film just as he hit stardom with Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, they are all wasted on a script that offers nothing new.

Silent Hill: Revelation forgets the one thing that made the classic game iconic: a sense of dread and compelling fear. It relies too much on special effects and horror movie clichés, and despite the visuals, lacks atmosphere. It even changes some points of the plot from the first film, with inconsistencies that will annoy fans who pay attention. To no one’s surprise, the film only managed to earn 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Silent Hill: Revelation
is currently streaming on Tubi.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

After the 1994 live-action version of Street Fighter opened in theaters to some success, several attempts were made to bring back Jean-Claude Van Damme for a sequel. When those films failed to develop, the franchise was rebooted with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li in 2009. A handful of familiar actors joined Kristin Kreuk in the lead role, but not even Micheal Clarke Duncan as Balrog or Neal McDonough as Bison can add anything compelling with a by-the-numbers script.

There’s not much good here — The Legend of Chun-Li is a painful watch. It takes itself far too seriously, and although Kreuk is an appealing actress, she’s not given much room to have fun here. As fans of the Street Fighter games know, Chun-Li is one of the more engaging characters, and the film fails to take advantage of that appeal. Worst of all, Kreuk left her role as Lana Lang in the DC live-action series Smallville, the show that made her a star, to make this film.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
is not currently available to stream.

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

It’s a given fact that the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. set the standard for bad video game movies. However, it has undergone a bit of a reputational renaissance in recent years. Some fans now insist the film is just misunderstood and should be revisited. There is just one problem: the film is legitimately bad. Not even a recent 30th anniversary 4K release of the film will change the poor structure and ridiculous tone. It just makes them more obvious in ultra-high definition.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 29% score from critics, and that’s generous. Disney’s Hollywood Pictures set out to make a family film and yet allowed the husband and wife directing team of Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton to go with a darker, more “adult” script that trashed the tone of the games that millions had grown to love. Stories of the duo’s tyrannical behavior on set are the stuff of legend, including the hiring of strippers to appear in the film. In the years that followed, the actors involved all called the film their worst experience on a set.

Super Mario Bros.
is not currently streaming.